


That Time Clint Introduced Oswin to Fried Pepsi

by Bodldops



Category: Doctor Who, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Community: milliways_bar, Gen, millicanon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-31
Updated: 2013-07-31
Packaged: 2017-12-21 23:25:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/906186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bodldops/pseuds/Bodldops
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written from the prompt - Clint, Oswin, and a county fair.  Why yes, this is a terribly bad idea.  Written from milliways_bar-verse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That Time Clint Introduced Oswin to Fried Pepsi

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TLvop](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TLvop/gifts).



Oswin isn’t sure what to think when they turn off the main highway, the Mustang’s engine rumbling lowly as Clint navigates between cars in a roughly-formed parking lot created in what was a field a few days ago. When he found her, dejected over a series of utterly failed soufflés, he promised something fun.

While being on a new planet for only the third time, and riding in a Mustang with all the windows down are both fun things, there’s screaming going on nearby on fairly regular intervals. This doesn’t seem like the best place to stop. Or even on the top ten places to stop.

“Um. Clint?” He seems to recognize her disbelief, but fails to do anything reassuring about it, parking the car and sliding out, pocketing the keys as he goes. “Clint? Clint!” After a moment she recognizes that he isn’t coming back, and she scrambles to get her seatbelt undone so she can follow. She’s glad he talked her into wearing sneakers today by the time she catches him. The ground is uneven and there are cars and people to dodge before she catches him outside the gated entrance to a large fenced area. Inside she can see tents, and enormous brick buildings, and some sort of large four-legged animal walks by, and, of course, there’s screaming.

“Clint, no.” She stands firm, balking at the gate because screaming, Clint, did he miss the part where screaming is bad? He smiles at her, slow and knowing. That’s… that’s a challenge right there. She grumbles a little, in her head – somehow he’s learned her weakness.

“Scared?” He asks, innocently, as if he isn’t weakening her resolve by the second.

“No. Well. Yes. … No.” She lifts her chin defiantly. “Not at all.”

“After you, then.” There’s really nothing she can do now except march her way through the gates, head held high.

Inside is a wonder-world. There are people with painted faces and foods she can’t even pretend to recognize and unfamiliar animals and they haven’t made it in ten steps before she somehow acquires a feathered hat and food on a stick – the first stick he tells her is gator, the second is grilled corn on the cob – she’s never heard of either, but they’re both delicious, and it keeps her from asking questions as he leads deeper into this unfamiliar world.

Five hours later night is starting to fall, and there’s certain things she can state definitively. There are certain things that shouldn’t be fried, ever. Baby lambs are quite possibly the cutest things ever. Pie eating contests are, quite possibly, the most ridiculous things ever created. And she? Is the queen of tea dueling. She wears her blue ribbon in her hat like a banner, munching on a piece of chocolate dipped bacon as they head closer to the screaming. 

“So, this midway thing – people actually pay to be dropped from the sky?” She asks incredulously, snagging another piece of bacon from the basket Clint is holding.  
“Dropping isn’t… quite correct.” Clint starts, but before he can elaborate, the lights of the Zipper start flashing, and the whole elaborate series of cages rattles to life, spinning and flipping and Oswin turns to Clint with wide eyes.

“No.”

“They’re not all…”

“Nope.”

“Oswin, there’s…”

“Not happening.”

“…some that don’t even…”

She crosses her arms over her chest and attempts to look forbidding, which he seems to find amusing – not exactly what she was going for. “No, not in a million years, respect the blue ribbon.”

“… That doesn’t even make sense.”

“Respect.” She reiterates sternly. A minute later, she’s dragging him towards the bumper cars with a positively unholy glee, because cars you can crash on purpose, why didn’t he say anything? He just rolls his eyes at her enthusiasm and gets them enough tickets to keep them busy for the next hour or so.

As night fully falls, they meander through the midway. She's been introduced to three new types of fried food and five new types of music, and is content for now to walk peaceably. The lights of the midway are frenetic, but she feels more at home in this noisy place bathed in the bright lights of the rides and games than she has in most places since leaving her home. He seems different here too – not more relaxed, but maybe… more comfortable in his surroundings, almost more than he was in the tidy apartment he inhabits. She notes it for later, content for now to ‘steal’ kettle corn from the bag he carries, listening to the fair-goers laugh and scream and talk all over and under each other. 

“Roll up, roll up, two dollars gets you three tries, simple game, pop a balloon and win a prize – hey there sir, win a bear for your sweetheart!” At first the sentence goes over her head, but Clint pauses in his stroll. Oswin’s smirk when she realizes that the carnival talker is actually addressing Clint stretches across her face.

“Oh, please honey, it will be fun!” She pleads in turn – hey, he got her into this place with similar tactics, he can hardly have a problem with it now. He gives her a look under the cover of handing her the bag of popcorn, but she just beams at him cheerfully. The fellow actually running the game seems bored – he’s watching a young boy throw the darts, each sliding away from the balloons as if repulsed, not bothering to encourage the boy to take another turn. Something in Clint’s stance changes – before it was fairly clear he was humoring her. Now when he takes the darts, he seems to be balancing them carefully between his fingers, spinning the tiny metal shafts delicately.

And then he proceeds to pop three balloons in rapid succession. Oswin laughs, the boy running the game frowns, and Clint gets the biggest, fluffiest stuffed bear that Oswin’s ever seen. It turns out to be a bad night to be running a carnival game – by the time they’re done, Oswin is hauling two stuffed bears, a giant inflatable hammer, a foam lizard on a string, and a goldfish swimming in his plastic bag.

She names the Fish ‘Bob’ once they get back to the Bar.


End file.
